Month: February 2013

BREAKING: Today a coalition of citizen groups, states and U.S. EPA announced a landmark settlement agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) requiring AEP to stop burning coal by 2015 at three power plants in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. AEP also agreed to replace a portion of these coal plants with new wind and solar investments in Indiana and Michigan, bringing more clean energy on line to meet the region’s electricity needs.

The world is getting worse:

The giant Swedish furniture retailer, IKEA, on Monday said it had recalled a batch of frozen meatballs sent to more than a dozen European countries after tests detected traces of horse meat.

The world is getting better:

Roughly half of Republicans — and 71 percent of Americans overall — support raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center and USA Today.

The world is getting worse:

The New Republic author Adam Kirsch writes: Essayists such as Rothbart and Crosley and Sedaris, one might say, represent the prose equivalent of reality TV. They, too, claim to be recording their lives, while in fact they are putting on a performance; and they, too, count on the reader to know the rules of the game, the by now familiar game of meta. What makes this kind of performance different from the performance of a fiction writer is that, by “acting” under their own names, they inevitably involve motives of amour-propre. The essayist is concerned, as a fiction writer is not, with what the reader will think of him or her. That is why the new comic essayists are never truly confessional, and never intentionally reveal anything that might jeopardize the reader’s esteem. “Love me” is their all-but-explicit plea.

The world is getting better:

Moonday meditation today at 5pm. Full moon tonight at 9.

The world is getting worse:

Dear Nicole Walker,

Thank you for your unwavering patience in receiving a response from The Believer. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to take “Micropreemies” for the magazine; however, we wish you luck placing it with another publication.
Thank you for thinking of us!

Best regards,
The Believer

The world is getting worse:

Nicole — we have some bad news.After spending hundreds of millions trying to win the White House, the Koch Brothers are shifting their millions to blocking President Obama’s progressive agenda.

You and I worked too hard in 2012 to let murky, ultra-conservative billionaires, like the Kochs, prevent us from making real progress.

If only poems could heal…. “The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy….For some, music, for some, pictures, for me primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves.” (Jeanette Winterson)

The world is getting better or getting worse:

Feb. 25, 2013
Dear Readers,
On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.

In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.

Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

Sincerely,
Steve Hannah
CEO
The Onion

The world is getting better:

We have some nice large Cara Cara Oranges and Blood Oranges for only .69 lb. We also have 5 lb. bags of Texas red grapefruit for $1.99 each. If that’s not enough for you, we now have 3 lb. bag Cuties (clementines) for $2.00 each.

And better:

A Mediterranean diet rich in fruits, vegetables, olive oil and a little wine can cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 30 percent, researchers reported on Monday in a study that shows the real-life benefits of a diet long encouraged by doctors.

And better:

A Cautionary Tale. Why are some artists more fated to the dustbins of history than others? Obviously, social, demographic, gender, racial, economic, and other issues are in mad play. But might there also be an innate flaw of CHARACTER in some artists? Something that doesn’t allow an artist to fully let loose, probe their own work as deeply, ruthlessly, relentlessly, honestly as it might need? Not always, but sometimes self-criticality is all. “What sucks in my own work? How can I fix it?” Especially in moments of change. Sometimes out of fear, delusion or just wanting to stay comfy and get love or enough money we fetishize our own ideas, turning them into private in-adaptable ideologies. Do we embalm ourselves? Protect ourselves from fear or failure? Or something else? Becoming rigid Miss Havishams, over-coding our work, making it merely competent, repetitive, limiting it and ourselves, when FLEXIBILITY is one of art’s life-bloods? Our excuses are many and true. “I have no money.” “I have no time.” “I didn’t go to the right schools.” “I’m a bad schmoozer.” “I am a short over-weight middle-aged balding Jewish long-distance truck-driver with glasses and no degrees and no idea how the art world works and am a bit of an asshole.” And yet …. One-hundred years ago this month ‘The Armory Show’ opened. The meta-balance of art shifted; art was in the balance. As were artist’s characters. In moments like this, maybe all moments, like today, do we shutter our mansions or open ourselves to an unknown new? Which is also here every day. – “Jerry Saltz Revisits the 1913 Armory Show.”

And truly better:

Bananas Are supposed to help with blood pressure. I bought us some at New Frontiers and they are in my office.

XO

In celebration of Bending Genre’s release, we will post a new mini-essay by our contributors every Monday every week until the middle of June. Next week, Dave Madden!